abnormous and enormous and ablaut and exile

So, we have seen that the primary fields in which the word "norm" is used are philosophy (Kant) which was taken up in law by Kelsen and meant the "oughts" on which a legal system should be based, and theology, to describe the basic standards or principles of religious faith (i.e., Scripture as norm). But wherever you have norms you not only have TV shows but you have people who break the norms. Why do people do so? Well, sometimes they can't help it and other times they just want to do so. Freshly-poured concrete is sometimes a more enticing invitation to someone than a double-enveloped, tissue-surrounded wedding invitation. But, some people don't seem to fit the norms because they are, well, ahem, abnormal. They "fall away" from the norm, they don't "fit in" to the standard, they march to the beat of a different drummer. Though there are only very few words for those who go along with the "norm" (orthodox comes to mind), there are several that describe those who have difficulty living according to the nrom. Let's look at a few of them. This essay will focus on those that are linguistically related to the word norm.

Abnormal and Anormal

Something that is abnormal deviates "from the ordinary rule or type." It is "contrary to rule or system; irregular, unusual, aberrant." It means the same as anormal, a word that sprung up in the same breath with abnormal in 1835. At first the word abnormal could be used solely as a descriptive term. From a medical usage in 1835: "The relative positions of the contents of the abdomen, and the abnormal states of that cavity." Or, from the same year, using the word anormal: "Dumeril and Bibron..consider the chameleons and the geckos as two groups absolutely anormal. However, the word anormal has fallen into desuetude, to be replaced by its cousin abnormal.

But words and human thought are subtle indeed. What entered into the language as a scientific or medical term, to describe a condition that doesn't obey the "rule," they became useful in sociological or anthropological analysis. Still in 1859, however, in the Origin of Species we have the scientific usage: "The wing of a bat is a most abnormal structure." But by 1871 we have: "The strange and abnormal habits of certain savage tribes."

We have just crossed a huge bridge, haven't we? Now the norm can be defined not simply in terms of how many ribs might be in the chest cavity or how many digits on a hand but in terms of human customs and behavior. Something that is abnormal now is something that is different from the way we do things. We become the norm, not simply in our bodily structure but in our thoughts and institutions. Still the old usage could be present, as when an 1878 theological author could write about the life of Christ, that he showed "special mercy and abnormal (i.e., beyond the "rule") compassion," but now the gauntlet was thrown down. In the 1880s through 1930s we had the development of new fields, such as anthropology, sociology, history, psychology and many others, all of which needed to set up shop either with a ready-made or an invented vocabulary. You don't establish yourself as a profession in late 19th century America without arming yourself with your own "take" on vocabulary. For example, as early as 1906 we have the field of abnormal psychology developing: "May we follow the trail of the subconscious in its meanderings through the realms of abnormal psychology." Or, from 1911, "Abnormal pscyhology, or the study of abnormal mental phenomena, is one of the late developments of scientific medicine."*

[*It is surprising to me that, at least as far as I know, we still have the field of abnormal psychology. Like the poor, it apparently is always with us. I will need to ask my colleagues or people "in the know" to see why this term still has life. I think the word is "morphing" into something like 'psychopathology,' but it still means the same thing--we think you are WEIRD.]

Abnormous and Enormous

The word abnormous seemed to rise and fall in the 19th century, but there is no reason why it should stay interred. Literally meaning "away from the rule," it meant "irregular, misshapen," and was used as early as 1771: "Sir Toby Matthews was a character equally if not of a more abnormous cast than his suspected coadjutor. But it seemed to pass over into the connotation of something huge or large by the last recorded attestation in the OED. From 1878: "A brat so abnormously distasteful and abominable." This quotation ought to make us smile a bit and say to ourselves that the word seemingly has morphed into a portmanteau word--a combination of abnormal and enormous.

So, what does enormous mean? It has the same root (norm) and a different prefix (ex) which means about the same thing as "ab." Ab carries with it more of the sense of something falling away from something else, while ex suggests something that moves out from the center of another thing. One goes into exile, for example, and not absile. When words change their form, from roar to rear, they are said to assume an ablaut and not an exlaut form; they "fall away" from a "standard." But the root meaning of enormous takes us back right to abnormal/abnormous. It means "deviating from the ordinary rule or type; abnormal, unusual, extraordinary." Unlike abnormal, enormous goes back to the 16th century and meant what abnormal would first mean. From 1590: "Innumberable (!) enormous Canons & Constitucions of Antichrist." From 1620: "Whether the appetite be enormous, or to irregular." And, to show its meaning as deviating from a rule, no clearer example could be given than from Paradise Lost (1667): "Nature her plaid at will Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet, Wilde above rule or Art; enormous bliss." But already by Milton's time the word enormous could signify something huge. He used it also in this way in PL: "Titan Heav'ns first born/ With his enormous brood." From 1776: "The urus..of the large enormous kind of Lithuania." And then, after that, all is history.

Conclusion

So, words that first meant approximately the same thing (deviation from the rule or the standard) and were not particularly value-laden (especially abnormal) soon became either limited in their field of meaning, such as enormous or became the word for something that simply was strange, weird, or even worse, something that was to be repressed, sequestered, controlled or even elimiminated. Is it still useful to be using the vocabulary of norms and "abnorms?" Or, will better words come forward? While you are thinking about that one, I will stop.

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